The plot was fragmented into 4 episodic tales with each reflected the same slice-of-life theme like the previous instalments; an affecting journey on resentment, loneliness, loss love, grief and late confession.

Having lost my aunt, I saw the grief of losing a sister through my mother’s and her surviving sister’s eyes. I found the story about a daughter traveling back to confront her parents both heartbreaking and moving. I loved how he built his characters, so that each were distinctive, even just by how they spoke or how they were described.

The Daughter", the first story was my favourite ( 5 stars), an interesting twist to how that photo was taken! More of the recognisable cafe owners' stories are revealed, and we also meet wonderful new characters, including the mother and daughter, who in their own independent loneliness travel through time to save each other. With his signature heartwarming characters and immersive storytelling, Kawaguchi once again invites the reader to ask themselves: what would you change if you could travel back in time?

Some of the stories are a little similar this time round, with multiple characters (all women) experiencing short, tragic and fatal illnesses. It was great to learn more about travelling in time I mean those cafés being not just in Tokyo, and what it means to live an everyday life that is wisdom and magic!The other person might not be thinking anything, but there is a tendency to just assume what the other is feeling without reaching out and asking.

There is also another theme running through the book – a question book about what you would do if the world was ending tomorrow. Before Your Memory Fades’ by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, translated from the Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot, is the third in his ‘Before the Coffee Gets Cold’ series. Kawaguchi has found a unique way to manipulate such a commonly used trope as time travel and has captured the power of joy as a legacy. More interesting than the second book of the series, but still very much the same story with identical themes and storylines.The way the author describes the cafe is simply mesmerising and it almost feels like you are there, sitting at a table, witnessing the story unravel. Something I strongly believe is that we mustn't allow the death of a person to be the cause of unhappiness. Poignant stories of missed conversations and lost opportunities are given the chance to be put to rights for different protagonists with different outcomes. These two quotes reaffirmed my thinking that our heart is the eyes of the soul, and if we truly want to know the person, we should never disregard this ability of another way to see.